Iowa Banks

How to Read the Iowa Bank Directory

This page lists every FDIC-insured bank with a primary regulatory address in Iowa. Inclusion does not depend on charter type — both state-chartered and nationally-chartered banks appear here when the FDIC institution directory places their headquarters in this state. Branch locations, ATM networks, and credit unions are NOT in scope; this is a headquarters-anchored view. The 230 institutions shown reflect the most recent quarterly FDIC release; counts will change at each refresh as institutions merge, are acquired, or close.

Health Grade Interpretation

Each bank's letter grade (A through F) is computed from four FDIC-reported metrics: Tier 1 capital ratio, return on assets, the Texas Ratio (non-performing assets ÷ tangible capital), and the efficiency ratio. Grades are relative — every quarter we recompute thresholds against the full FDIC universe, so a "B" today may have been an "A" last cycle if the median improved. Across Iowa, 52 institutions (23%) currently sit in the A or B band, while 117 (51%) fall in the D or F band. The C cluster — the broad middle — typically captures roughly half of any state's banks and is not a warning signal on its own.

What State Concentration Tells You

Banks register their headquarters in Iowa for several distinct reasons: regional community service (the bulk of small community banks), favorable trust law (a handful of states attract large national fiduciary operations), regulatory familiarity, or historic charter inheritance. A high concentration of total assets in a single state — South Dakota, Delaware, and Ohio are well-known examples — usually reflects a few very large institutions choosing the state for tax or regulatory reasons, not breadth of local banking competition. Below the top of the table, the long tail of mid-sized and community banks gives a clearer picture of local market structure.

When Failures Matter

Since 2000, 4 banks headquartered in Iowa have failed. Every depositor at those banks was made whole up to the standard FDIC insurance ceiling (currently $250,000 per depositor, per ownership category, per institution). Bank failures cluster around macro events (the 2008-2010 wave, the regional bank stress of 2023) rather than steady attrition, so a clean recent record at the state level does not imply state-level safety — it usually reflects the absence of a triggering shock. The "Under Stress" ranking is more useful for forward-looking comfort than the historical failure count, because it scores current capital and credit-loss capacity.

Sources, Refresh Cadence, and Corrections

Every figure on this page derives from the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile and the FDIC Institution Directory, both of which are public-domain government datasets. We re-pull the data on the FDIC's schedule (a quarterly release plus monthly institution-directory delta files for merger and closure events). Asset and capital figures are reported as of the most recent quarter-end and lag the calendar by approximately ninety days — this is the FDIC's reporting lag, not ours. If a specific bank record looks wrong (renaming, merger, missing fields), the contact page accepts corrections; we reconcile them against the source feed at the next refresh.